Click to play videoMumbai: The words clean and slum don't go together, do they? But a small revolution set in the slums of Mumbai is changing that perception. So, if you associated slums with dirty cramped spaces, your opinion will soon change. Slums in Mumbai are doing some serious garbage management and getting a facelift.
At Hanumannagar slum area in the eastern suburbs, garbage carts from one house to the other every morning to collect garbage. Vanita, a slum dweller tells she is doing now what she wouldn't have bothered doing a year ago—dumping dry and wet garbage separately. And her neighbours too are following her, thanks to a garbage disposal system that's turned their lives around.
“Our area is a lot cleaner than before,” says Vinita. Another slum dweller says, “Our standard of living has improved.”
With support from NGOs, people living in the slum areas of Mumbai have adopted vermin composting to process the garbage locally.
“Dumping garbage in a pit helps reduce cost of transport. It also avoids the pollution at landfill sites,” said Rishi Aggarwal, Program Director, NGO United Way.
Wet garbage collected from homes is sprayed with microorganisms or EM solution, which helps in processing of the biodegradable garbage. A bed of sugarcane waste and cow dung is prepared and earthworms are added to speedup the processing. The garbage is transferred and covered with a layer of sand and a month later you get fine odorless manure rich in nutrients. Perfect for plants in the backyard.
According to the municipal corporation slums contribute over 35% of the city's total waste. So far only a handful of the many slums in Mumbai have adopted this technique. It's a small step in the right direction giving way to cleaner living spaces and shining faces.
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